Elizabeth Moon - The Speed of Dark

Finally, his breath failed and he had to stop, gasping. “I need a break, Lou. C’mon over here and let’s review—” Lou followed him obediently and sat on the stone ledge bordering the patio while Tom took one of the chairs. Lou was sweating, he noticed, but not breathing particularly hard.

Tom finally stops, gasping, and declares himself too tired to go on. He leads me off to one side while two others step onto the ring. He is breathing very hard; his words come spaced apart, which makes it easier to understand them. I am glad he thinks I am doing so well.

“But here — you’re not out of breath yet. Go fight someone else, give me a chance to catch mine, and we’ll talk later.”

I look over at Marjory sitting beside Lucia. I saw her watching me while Tom and I fought. Now she is looking down and the heat has brought more pink into her face. My stomach clenches, but I get up and walk over to her.

“Hi, Marjory,” I say. My heart is pounding.

She looks up. She is smiling, a complete smile. “Hi, Lou,” she says. “How are you tonight?”

“Fine,” I say. “Will you… do you want to… will you fence with me?”

“Of course.” She reaches down to pick up her mask and puts it on. I cannot see her face as well now, and she will not be able to see mine when I’m masked; I slide it back over my head. I can look without being seen; my heart steadies.

We begin with a recapitulation of some sequences from Saviolo’s fencing manual. Step by step, forward and sideways, circling and feeling each other out. It is both ritual and conversation, as I balance parry against her thrust and thrust against her parry. Do I know this? Does she know that? Her movements are softer, more tentative, than Tom’s. Circle, step, question, answer, a dialogue in steel to music I can hear in my head.

I make a touch when she does not move as I expect. I did not want to hit her. “Sorry,” I say. My music falters; my rhythm stumbles. I step back, breaking contact, blade tip grounded.

“No — a good one,” Marjory says. “I know better than to let down my guard…”

“You’re not hurt?” It felt like a hard touch, jarring the palm of my hand.

“No… let’s go on.”

I see the flash of teeth inside her mask: a smile. I salute; she answers; we move back into the dance. I try to be careful, and through the touch of steel on steel I can feel that she is firmer, more concentrated, moving faster. I do not speed up; she makes a touch on my shoulder. From that point, I try to fence at her pace, making the encounter last as long as it can.

Too soon I hear her breathing roughen and she is ready to stop for a rest. We thank each other, clasping arms; I feel giddy.

“That was fun,” she says. “But I’ve got to quit making excuses for not working out. If I’d been doing my weights, my arm wouldn’t hurt.”

“I do weights three times a week,” I say. Then I realize she might think I am telling her what to do or boasting, but all I meant was that I do weights so my arms don’t hurt.

“I should,” she says. Her voice sounds happy and relaxed. I relax too. She is not unhappy that I said I do weights. “I used to. But I’m on a new project and it’s eating my time.”

I picture the project as something alive gnawing at a clock. This must be the research Emmy mentioned.

“Yes. What project is that?” I can hardly breathe as I wait for the answer.

“Well, my field is neuromuscular signal systems,” Marjory said. “We’re working on possible therapies for some of the genetic neuromuscular diseases that haven’t yielded to gene therapy.” She looks at me, and I nod.

“Like muscular dystrophy?” I ask.

“Yes, that’s one,” Marjory says “It’s how I got involved in fencing, actually.”

I feel my forehead wrinkling: confusion. How would fencing and muscular dystrophy be connected? People with MD don’t fence. “Fencing…?”

“Yes. I was on my way to a departmental meeting, years ago, and cut through a courtyard just as Tom was giving a fencing demo. I had been thinking of good muscle function from a physician’s perspective, not from a user’s perspective… I remember I was standing there, watching people fence and thinking of the biochemical behavior of muscle cells, when Tom suddenly asked me if I’d like to try it. I think he mistook the look on my face for interest in fencing when it was the leg muscles I’d been watching.”

“I thought you fenced in college,” Lou said.

“That was college,” Marjory said. “I was a grad student at the time.”

“Oh… and you’ve always worked on muscles?”

“In one sense or another. With the success of some gene therapies for pure muscle diseases I’ve shifted more toward neuromuscular… or my employers have, I should say. I’m hardly a project director.” She looks at my face a long time; I have to look away because the feeling is too intense. “I hope you didn’t mind my asking you to ride with me to the airport, Lou. I felt safer with you along.”

I feel myself getting hot. “It’s not… I didn’t… I wanted—” A gulp and a swallow. “I am not upset,” I say when I get my voice under control. “I was glad to go with you.”

“That’s good,” Marjory says.

She says nothing more; I sit beside her feeling my body relax. If it were possible, I would just sit here all night. As my heart slows, I look around at the others. Max and Tom and Susan are fencing two-on-one. Don is slouched in a chair across the patio; he is staring at me but looks away when I look at him.

Tom waved good-bye to Max, Susan, and Marjory, who all walked out together. When he turned around, Lou was still there. Lucia had gone inside, trailed as usual by those who wanted to talk.

“There’s research,” Lou said. “New. A treatment, maybe.”

Tom listened more to the jerkiness of Lou’s voice, the strain obvious in the pitch and tonality, than to the actual words. Lou was frightened; he sounded like this only when he was anxious.

“Is it still experimental, or is it available?”

“Experimental. But they, the office, they want — my boss said… they want me to… to take it.”

“An experimental treatment? That’s odd. Usually those aren’t open to commercial health plans.”

“It’s — they — it is something developed at the Cambridge center.” Lou said, his voice even more jerky and mechanical. “They own it now. My boss says his boss wants us to take it. He does not agree, but he cannot stop them.”

Tom felt a sudden desire to slam his fist into someone’s head. Lou was scared; someone was bullying him. He’s not my child, Tom reminded himself. He had no rights in this situation, but as Lou’s friend, he did have responsibilities.

“Do you know how it’s supposed to work?” he asked.

“Not yet.” Lou shook his head. “It just came out on the Web this past week; the local autism society had a meeting about it, but they didn’t know… They think it’s still years from human use. Mr. Aldrin — my supervisor — said it could be tested now, and Mr. Crenshaw wants us to take it.”

“They can’t make you use experimental stuff, Lou; it’s against the law to force you—”

“But they could take my job—”

“Are they threatening to fire you if you don’t? They can’t do that.” He didn’t think they could. They couldn’t at the university, but the private sector was different. That different? “You need a lawyer,” he said. He tried to think of lawyers he knew. Gail might be the right lawyer for this, Tom thought. Gail had done human rights work for a long time and, more than that, had made it pay. He would think about who might help, rather than his own increasing desire to smash someone’s head in.